I’m writing this homescreen hero while Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are in full swing. In 2024, US consumers spent a whopping $17.5 billion during Black Friday, and that’s set to be eclipsed this year. Then the holidays are just around the corner, with partners, children, nephews, and nieces all expecting presents. And don’t even get me started on birthdays.
All in all, not only does my bank balance take a hit during these seasons, but I feel like it’s become increasingly difficult to keep track of what everyone likes. My nephew used to love Paw Patrol, but now he’s a diehard Star Wars fan. My niece used to like Gabby’s Dollhouse, but now she’s moved on to some other Disney show.
It’s exhausting. Thankfully, there’s an app that brings a certain level of organization to all this madness. It’s called Giftster, and even though I’ve only recently discovered it, I think I might be on the brink of saying goodbye to the gift list chaos that surrounds me.
Homescreen heroes
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
Giftster is the family gift registry for Christmas, holiday gift-giving, birthdays, weddings, baby showers, and more. It also has a Secret Santa functionality that competes with the Elfster app that I recently fell in love with. It’s used by well over three million people and has the added benefit of being 100% free.
Create gift lists for you and family members
The first step is, of course, to set up a list. You can make as many lists as you want, either for yourself or for your children. It’s as simple as inputting a list name, an optional note, and finally selecting an image from the pre-loaded options. From there, you can set who can see the list before finalizing everything and clicking the ‘create’ button.
If you’d like to set up a list for a child, then you must first create a ‘child account’ in the app. This only requires inserting the child’s name and birthday and can be done in a matter of seconds. If you’d like others, such as a spouse or partner, to add to your child’s gift lists, then that’s easy to do, too. Just go into the child’s account and make the other person a collaborator. They’ll then be able to create, delete, and edit that child’s lists and gift preferences.
Add items to your gift list in seconds
With your list created, now it’s time for the fun part of populating it with gift ideas. Giftster makes this as simple as adding a link and clicking ‘fetch’. The app will then do the hard work of extracting the image, price, and description and populating all that information into the Giftster app.
If you plan on browsing for gifts while on a desktop or laptop, then you should download the Giftster browser extension. That way, you can add gifts directly from your browser’s toolbar.
If you’re not sure what you want specifically or you’d just like to give your loved ones a light steer, then you can add your gift preferences to the app too. This includes things like clothes and shoe sizes and favorite colors, as well as interests and hobbies.
Share your lists with friends and family
Private gift lists are all well and good, but if you really want to put them to use, then you’re going to have to share them with others. This can be done at the point of creating the list, or if you’d like to do it later, all you have to do is change the list’s privacy settings. The three options are ‘private’, ‘shared’, and ‘public’. Most people will choose shared, although if you’d like non-Giftster members to see your lists, then public is the best option.
If all this gift list functionality wasn’t enough, Giftster can also facilitate a virtual gift exchange. This feature includes all the elements you’d expect, including names being kept secret, picks that mean your named person isn’t able to pick you, and exclusions to ensure you don’t pick out your spouse.
Giftster is the app that covers every element of gift giving, and if you can get all your family and friends to use it too, then you’ll be onto a super sweet organizational gift-giving bliss that you never imagined possible.
Download Giftster for free on iOS or Android
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paulo.n.hatton@gmail.com (Paul Hatton)
